The UltraSimple Diet: A More Detailed Look at How to Kick-Start Your Metabolism

SOON I WILL BE OFFERING you another opportunity to do The UltraSimple Diet Challenge with me as I mentioned in last week’s blog.

Let me tell you a little bit about how that will work.  In the next few weeks we will send you a special webinar that will outline how you can become part of the next challenge which will launch very soon. In this article, I want to tell you a bit about how the challenge works.

On the Challenge, I will to take you through the program I have used exclusively with my patients who come from all over to find help for chronic problems.    I often joke and say I am a resort doctor, the doctor of last resort.  I also say I am “wholistic” doctor because I take care of patients with a “whole list” of problems.The truth is that many suffer unnecessarily from problems that have solutions. You just don’t hear about those solutions.  This is the best kept secret in science and medicine.

In my medical practice I spoke to a young man in his 40’s who had suffered for years with terrible reflux, irritable bowel, asthma, and terrible “environmental” allergies.

He was on medication for reflux, cholesterol, multiple inhalers for allergies and asthma, decongestants and antihistamines just to get through the day.

I simply put him on The UltraSimple Diet – and not only did he throw away his reflux medication, he never had another episode of heartburn or reflux, and all his asthma and allergy medication, but his irritable bowel disappeared and he lost 10 pounds without even trying.

His energy is great and he is a totally different person, instead of being stuck on medications for the rest of his life, which didn’t even help that much!  He didn’t realize there was another way to deal with his symptoms, or even to get to root of the problems.

Let me tell you the real secret of why I wrote, The UltraSimple Diet–it was NOT to help people lose weight.  It was to help people EXPERIENCE, often for the first time, what it is like to achieve a state of UltraWellness–lifelong health and vitality.

I know what it is like to be very sick — I suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for many years and learned from the inside out how to heal myself.

The UltraSimple Diet gives you the tools and information to get to the roots of illness and obesity.  The automatic side effect of dealing with the roots of illness is weight loss-without cravings or calorie, carb, or fat restriction.

I want to confess right up front-my goal is to help you realize that the chronic complaints you have come to accept as normal are NOT!

And in just 7 days you can experience a dramatic transformation in your health.

I encourage my patients to ask what they really want from life.

What do you want from your life? For your health and for your family?

Most people say:

“I didn’t realize how bad I was feeling until I started feeling so good.”

My wish is for everyone to say:

“I didn’t know I could feel this good!”

So how does this work? And how did I learn about this type of healing?

As I reviewed in previous blogs, The UltraSimple Diet addresses the roots of illness — and two very important ones are dealt with directly in the program – inflammation and toxicity.

But how did I learn this?  Here are just a few ways…

• I studied nutrition at Cornell University (among other things).
• I am Board certified in Family Medicine and trained at a University of California at San Francisco program.
• I have been personally inquiring into health for over 30 years through diet, yoga and studying detoxification.
• I am the former medical director of Canyon Ranch, one of the world’s top health resorts where I worked with patients addressing inflammation and toxicity for nearly 10 years.
• I am the Founder and medical director of The UltraWellness Center as well as doing many things in teaching, academics and research.
• I am Editor-in-chief of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine
• I am on the faculty and board of directors at The Institute of Functional Medicine, a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching principles and practice of this new medicine to doctors.
•  And I am collaborating on research with Harvard Medical School in systems and functional medicine.

So as you can see I am busy enough.

Why, then, do I spend so much time trying to educate people about all this?

Well, it’s because I know what it is like to be very sick — I suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for many years and learned from the inside out how to heal myself.  I have also worked with thousands of very sick patients helping them heal.

What I share with you in The UltraSimple Diet are all the jewels I have learned that quickly and successfully help people heal and lose weight.

It works because it addresses the real causes of disease, the common roots of all illness.  It is based on the emerging science of systems biology and medicine — Functional Medicine — and fixes the basic systems of the body that underlie all functions by correcting imbalances that have previously lead to illness.

So how do YOU do it?

•  Get rid of bad food
• Add good foods
• Detoxify
• Reduce inflammation
• Relax
• Reflect

And here is what you DONT have to do:

• Go hungry
• Have cravings
• Eat gross foods
• Exercise too much
• Wait long for results

If you want to enhance the program even further, then you can try The Enhanced Program, which adds nutritional supplements, liver detoxification, gentle exercise, and stress reduction tools.

That’s it really.  It’s simple.

Just eliminate the foods that create toxicity and inflammation and eat detoxifying and anti-inflammatory foods.

I reviewed the details in previous blogs of what causes inflammation and toxicity and how to fix it, so I refer you back to those to read more because I want to get into the nitty gritty of how to do The UltraSimple Diet.

Before I tell you how to do it in more detail, I want you to know what you might experience in one week.

• Weight loss up to 10 pounds
• Improved digestion
• Relief from chronic health problems
• Better energy and mood
• Less congestion, allergies, joint pain, and fluid retention
• Better sleep and skin

And here are the health conditions that can improve with this approach.

• Arthritis
• Asthma and allergies
• Chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia
• Diabetes
• Food allergies
• Headaches
• Heart disease
• Irritable bowel and inflammatory bowel
• Autoimmune diseases
• Menstrual problems and menopause
• And many more!

OK, so let’s review the nuts and bolts of the program.

There are two versions of the program:  The Basic Program and The Enhanced Program.

Here is The Basic Program:

• Get rid of bad foods and toxins – sugar, trans fat, HFCS, refined carbohydrates, processed foods, alcohol, and caffeine
• Add good foods – whole, unprocessed vegetables, fruit, beans, brown rice, fish, and chicken
• Avoid all potential food allergens – dairy, gluten, yeast, eggs, peanuts, corn, nightshades, and citrus
• Drink UltraShakes – a low allergy protein shake full of nutrients
• Drink UltraBroth – vegetable broth you can easily make by cooking up vegetables, spicing as you like, draining and saving the liquid and sipping on that throughout the day
• Take UltraBaths – add Epsom salt, baking soda and lavender oil to your bath
• Reflection – write in you journal daily while you are on the program to reflect on how you are feeling, what things are changing, etc.

And here is The Enhanced Program (which is also pretty simple!), which is exactly the same as the Basic, only you add:

• Optimized liver detoxification with olive oil and lemon juice in the morning
• Nutritional supplements – Liver detoxification supportive herbs and nutrients, Vitamin C, Magnesium citrate, Probiotics and an Herbal laxative
• Rice protein to provide amino acids that help your body detoxify
• Flax seeds and flax oil for omega 3 fats
• Exercise-walking
• Active relaxation

So what does an average day look like on The UltraSimple Diet?

• Journaling upon waking
• Breakfast (Lemon juice and hot water, green tea, and UltraShake)
• Snack (UltraBroth, +/- UltraShake (if hungry))
• Lunch (2 cups vegetables, 1/2 cup brown rice, +/- UltraShake)
• Snack (UltraBroth, +/- UltraShake (if hungry))
• Dinner (2 cups vegetables, 1/2 cup brown rice, 4-6 ounces fish or chicken, or 1 cup of beans, 1 cup UltraBroth)
• Journaling before bed
• UltraBath

That’s it – surprisingly simple, and effective.  It is even hard for me to believe that such a simple change in diet and lifestyle could make such a difference in just 7 days, but it does. And I have seen it thousands of times.

And don’t be fooled into thinking you’ll be hungry:  one of the most common comments I received when this program was being beta tested by over 100 people was that there was actually too much food and they didn’t eat it all.  There wasn’t a single complaint that they were too hungry, only a few complaints that there was too MUCH food!

If you are doing The Enhanced Program there are a few other things to incorporate into your day:

• Lemon juice and olive oil
• Additional supplements – Vitamin C, probiotics, magnesium citrate, liver detoxification supportive herbs and nutrients
• Yoga
• Walking 30 minutes a day
• Sauna or steam bath 3 times a week

That’s it!

So what do you do when you are done with the 1-week program?

Well, you have two options.

The first is to just keep going for 3 weeks — the benefits deepen and you can experience profound changes in your life and health.

The second option is to end the program, reintroduce foods, and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

But just a quick warning about reintroducing potentially allergic foods.  Go slow and be careful. Do it in two phases as I outline in The UltraSimple Diet.  This gives your body a chance to gradually adjust and to help you identify if there are a few foods that you should get rid of permanently, which you didn’t know made you sick.  Using the food re-introduction log is very important in this process.

As you might get by now, my true goal for all of you is to help you create UltraWellness, a state of deep and profound health, not just the absence of symptoms or disease.

The UltraSimple Diet Challenge will help you help yourself to get healthy. Watch for an invitation in your inbox to watch a special video that introduces the challenge. It should arrive in the next 5 days to 1 week.

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Do you have any questions about The UltraSimple Diet?

Have you already been through it and if so, what have been your results?

If you have been through it already, do you have any tips for others to get the most out of it?

Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD